Schönberger DK, Bruns P, Röder B. Visual artificial grammar learning across 1 year in 7-year-olds and adults.
J Exp Child Psychol 2024;
241:105864. [PMID:
38335709 DOI:
10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105864]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2023] [Revised: 11/30/2023] [Accepted: 01/08/2024] [Indexed: 02/12/2024]
Abstract
Acquiring sequential information is of utmost importance, for example, for language acquisition in children. Yet, the long-term storage of statistical learning in children is poorly understood. To address this question, 27 7-year-olds and 28 young adults completed four sessions of visual sequence learning (Year 1). From this sample, 16 7-year-olds and 20 young adults participated in another four equivalent sessions after a 12-month-delay (Year 2). The first three sessions of each year used Stimulus Set 1, and the last session used Stimulus Set 2 to investigate transfer effects. Each session consisted of alternating learning and test phases in a modified artificial grammar learning task. In Year 1, 7-year-olds and adults learned the regularities and showed transfer to Stimulus Set 2. Both groups retained their final performance level over the 1-year period. In Year 2, children and adults continued to improve with Stimulus Set 1 but did not show additional transfer gains. Adults overall outperformed children, but transfer effects were indistinguishable between both groups. The current results suggest that long-term memory traces are formed from repeated sequence learning that can be used to generalize sequence rules to new visual input. However, the current study did not provide evidence for a childhood advantage in learning and remembering sequence rules.
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